慶應義塾一貫教育校派遣留学制度

留学報告書 ＩＩ (2021 年度留学生)
塾内在籍校・学年（派遣時）

慶應義塾湘南藤沢高等部５年

留学先校名

Taft School

留学期間

2021 年 9 月 から 2022 年 6 月まで留学を振り返って留学先では、期待どおりの生活を過ごせましたか？
アメリカの学校の多様性を尊敬する環境に過ごせたのが大きな利点。人種や宗教など関係なく友達を作ることが可能で、英語以外の母国語の友人が多く、様々な文化について会話が盛り上がった。
授業の形式、特に受けたい授業を自ら選べることが私に合っていた。後期に受けた「Programming inPython」が大学で情報を学習したいと思うきっかけとなった。授業の数も豊富で興味の持つ授業がない場
合は先生と１対１で授業を受けることができるため自身の教育に自分の希望を反映することができた。
The one part that was “negative” about the experience was how unprepared I was to enter theAmerican school system. I underestimated the power of taking AP classes and only took one. I
felt like I was not doing difficult enough classes and often met up with my academic dean todiscuss how I could make up for it or different courses I could take. I ended up moving up insome classes and ultimately do not regret any of the classes that I took.

クラブ活動や課外活動など、学業以外の活動について教えてください。
In the fall I was a part of the musical. I was a part of the ensemble since this was a very
dance-heavy musical and I wanted to try that out. I realized that there was no boundary
between the grades and I made friends who I still contact across all grades.
In the winter I did dance, and I was in three group dances in a showcase at the end of thewinter season. There were so many experience levels gathered in the club that there was always
a place for everybody.
In the spring I did community service, dance, and musical theater. I wanted to try out cs
because the Taft motto was very service oriented. I helped children do their homework in local
elementary schools and got to know the community as well as helped set up Taft school
activities. I was fortunate enough to be accepted to dance in the spring showcase where theseniors choreographed dances, and I did a hip hop dance with a very diverse group of people.
The practices were often after dinner since it was not an official club, so we got together
once a week for two hours up until the showcase. The dances were choreographed along the way
and we all got to have a say in the formations and dances. I was recruited along with twoother students to dance and sing ensemble in the musical since there was a shortage ofdancers, and we spent a few hours a week learning the choreography.

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ルームメイトはどのような方でしたか？（1 人部屋だった場合は、同じ寮の友人について教えてください。）
My dorm was the second smallest in Taft, consisting of less than 20 people, so the community
was tighter than others. We had “feeds” where we got together and ate in the common room andit gave us a chance to talk to each other if we had not talked before. I met some of myclosest friends through my dorm, and often visited their rooms during study hall to talk orstudy together. We respected each other’s space most of the time, the only problems being
bathroom cleanliness and missing food in the kitchen. There were dorm monitors or dormparents(faculty) who would check on each room twice a night to talk over anything and I got
very close with them through conversations about fashion, plants, and room decoration.
アドバイザーとの面会はありましたか？ どのような内容でしたか？
I met up with my advisor once a week at most. My advisory group consisted of 3 people so weknew each other pretty well. We often used the advisory time to fill out school-wide surveys,
destress before finals week, or talk about recent events and give feedback on school-wideevents. We also met one on one to go over grades every quarter and go over course
registration. My advisor quickly became a person who I could contact about a lot of issues, soI visited her about academic and personal issues and she was always up to talk in her office.

学業について各授業について授業の内容・進め方・課題・試験・日本との比較などについて触れながら記入してください。
UM English – 6 books throughout the year along with short stories and poems. Final essays orprojects for each book and discussions on each homework reading during class. Grades werealmost solely based on the final assignments.
Honors Accel Precalculus – Quizzes every week and Tests for each unit. Grades based on said
assessments. Similar style to SFC.
AP Human Geo – many research essays, presentations, etc. throughout the year. Lecture-basedclasses with a few debates and discussions.
Philosophy – Heavily discussion-based. Grades based on essays and class participation. Often
spent the entire class time talking about certain questions and current events.
Honors Spanish 1 – Quiz/Test every unit. Grades based on presentations, interview tests, andassessments. Focused on equal amounts of input and output.
Stagecraft – Created set props for musicals and learning how to manage lighting for various
shows throughout the semester. No assessments so grades were based on participation andquality of projects.
Aquatic Sciences – Class was lecture-based with a lot of student engagement. Essays, labs, andpresentations along with Tests were part of the grade. Field trips to nearby lakes to collectwater, insect samples and dissections to study anatomy.
Programming in Python – lecture-style class and small programming projects outside of class.
Final project was 2 months long where we were allowed to do anything we wanted. My group

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慶應義塾一貫教育校派遣留学制度
created a website for the track team at Taft where they could track their times and get
recommended workouts.

今後について
この派遣留学を通して、自分自身にどのような変化があったと感じていますか。
I feel a lot more open-minded about others and accepting of myself. The US is a diverse hub andseeing so much representation for so many minority groups made it a lot easier to feel insecureor ashamed of many aspects of yourself. I joined the GSA and Asian clubs and attended meetings
held by Black Alliance and other Alliance/Affinity groups which made me more aware of thestruggles and beauty of other cultural groups. I also feel more confident in my potential togrow academically. I found a topic of passion through a course at Taft and now know that I wantto move in a computer science direction, took part in multiple extracurriculars which forced me
to explore different possible interests, and was constantly surrounded by people who motivatedme to work hard.

今後の派遣留学生へのアドバイス（事前に日本で学習しておいた方が良いことや、用意しておいた方が良いことがあればお知らせください）
I recommend taking the time to look into Honors courses and making sure that your course list
is academically rigorous for you, since that is one of the few regrets that I have from theyear abroad. It isn’t necessary to study beforehand since there is summer work before theyear begins and teachers are more than willing to catch you up if there are any areas you areunsure about, but do know your Japanese culture and politics well, since it could lead toexciting conversations with other international students. Look into clubs and groups and makefind some that you are interested in, because club activities are a big part of Taft life andis a good place to meet likeminded people.

以上

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